Full Frontal Naked Nationalism

Or When Nationalism Is Better Than The Alternative.

The Danes self define as the happiest people in the world: sometimes it seems the government chew their food for them (the Danish tax rate goes up to 80%). Danes are worried “Brussels” will put an end to that. Whatever that is. In truth, alien foreigners have exhausted their welcome. On May 25, 2014, 27% voted for the nationalist anti-European far right.

That’s the same score as Marine Le Pen got in France.

French President Soon? Careful, She Bites

What’s going on? Well, each time extremism rises, it’s because there are very good reasons for this to happen. Clearly the status quo ante is unacceptable in Europe. Something I have said myself for years. And not just in Europe. A revolution is needed, and fast. More and more of We The People are arriving at the same conclusion. That’s good and necessary.

I still am an extreme internationalist. For me, for decades, nationalism was the definition of hatred and war. I was also against imperialism. I was once personally attacked by hyper nationalistic fascists, with lethal force (an IED).

Meanwhile I discovered that being against blue sky meant preferring the blackness of space. To my dismay, having a high minded internationalist mien is an invitation to victimization. It’s quite a bit related to the attitude of the Jews vis a vis Hitler in the 1930s: it’s not because you turn the other cheek, each time it gets slapped, that morality, let alone survival, progresses. Instead, the pacifist sheep will get a concussion, and finish in the incinerator.

Ukraine, of course, is an example when nationalism is turning into a good force. Only nationalism is strong enough to resist the traditional dictatorial instincts of the Kremlin. Better plenty of nationalism, than morbidity below a crazed autocrat’s boot.

In France the national Front just won the European election, becoming, on this occasion, France’s first party. It’s a victory for Marine Le Pen’s strategy over her dad’s grumpy style.

One would guess that I am horrified, as I am as progressive as they come.

But not so. Instead I am amused: progress is not always where it’s supposed to be.

Sometimes, progress takes a circuitous route. It’s because plutocratic Rome collapsed that the Franks could take over, and legislate a much more advanced civilization: much fewer death penalties, no more slavery, total religious freedom (after more than a century of religious terror).

If plutocratic Rome had not collapsed, the barbarity of Greco-Roman civilization would have persevered. Only a radical reboot, the one the Franks imposed, could relaunched Western civilization in a sustainable form.

Another example is the occupation of France by the Nazis: it actually civilized the Nazis to the point that collaboration with France was forced onto Hitler by his colleagues to the point the Nazi dictator had to agree to it, although he argued that would make France win the war (as France’s industry was supposed to fabricate daily necessities, while Germany concentrated on weapons).

The end result is that France and Germany started to unify in 1948, something that certainly would not have happened if France had not declared war to Germany in 1939. War is also a debate.

In 2012, I saw a debate between Marine Le Pen, and the top French economy pundit. Marine Le Pen described basically how the fractional reserve system worked, and intoned that this was completely wrong. However, the cocksure pundit excoriated her, with conventional wisdom. He claimed she understood nothing, had no knowledge of finance whatsoever.

A week later, the same pundit debated economics with Melanchon, head of the leftist opposition to the Socialist Parti, the Front de Gauche. Melanchon told the pundit he had been wrong, and Marine Le Pen was right.

And so do I.

On a related subject, Marine Le Pen has been very loud and clear that the Euro was too high. That, too, is correct. The high Euro has been killing the part of French industry that makes mass items (whereas Italy, Switzerland and Germany long focused on higher end products).

It’s of course worse for many other Euro countries.

Many European countries have been de-industrializing. It’s not because people there are dumb and lazy. Far from it. In truth Europe invents much, and other exploits those inventions.

How?

Well, Europe is open to the world economically, a bit as Athens was. and Pericles beautifully boasted in his famous funeral oraison. However openness is not everything: Athens was defeated and democracy came back, under the attenuated form of representative democracy, only 23 centuries later.

European intellectuals themselves have excoriated Europe, as if it were the source of all evils. Confusing the Nazis and their enemies the French is a case in point, chronic in the enslaved USA.

And yet, what is the truth? The rest of the world has not played nice with Europe.

Take an outrageous example. European governments have been buying from the USA. The converse, though, is forbidden by American law (except under special circumstances).

The conspiracy against Europe is deep and wide. Corrupt American industrialists, working hand in hand with the government of the USA and corrupt leaders overseas (example of such corruptocrats would be Major, Schroeder, and Blair) conspired to impose a war plane, the F35.

The F35 is the world’s worst plane: it has no better performance than the F105 “Thunderchief”, a 50 year old plane that failed in the Vietnam war. The F35 can’t go fast, it can’t carry much, it can’t accelerate more than 4 gs (the Rafale does 10gs), and, although labelled a “stealth” plane, it is fully visible to Russian and Chinese VHF radar. It’s also the most expensive military program ever: half a trillion dollars, and counting.

That turkey prevents the furthering of a European superiority fighter, although Airbus‘ Typhoon/Eurofighter and Dassault fighters are known to be the world’s two best fighter bombers (they both take out the American superiority fighter, the F22 Raptor).

So hundreds of thousands high tech defense jobs are going to the USA, instead of Europe, on that project alone. Just because European politicians have been on the take. At least, nationalism would stop such an absurdity.

To stop all this non sense, some nationalism is needed. Some will say, as some French philosophers did, that Europe is dead, long live the world.

Yet, it’s not so simple: as I explained, both North America and Russia have been founded on maximally exploitative philosophies, which have triumphed.

Europe’s sustainable philosophy has taken a beating, and the weaker Europe gets, the more of beating sustainability gets.

So this is not just about Europe, it’s about sustainability and diversity.

Out of 750 European MPs, around 140 are Europhobes. The Danes and the British UKIP despise Marine Le Pen. Yet, if they want to have any influence in the European Parliament, the Europhobes will have to find common grounds, thus valuable complaints.

Well, there is no independence, even on the high seas. Even for a British boy, whatever the UKIP feels like bellowing about. A French helicopter flew across the ocean, and picked up the unconscious boy to provide him with state of the art treatment (top French hospitals use methods akin to hibernation, as was done with Michael Schumacher).

It’s a small world, and in a small world there are no borders, only limits beyond which outrage turns to violence. And the worst is, that some of this violence is necessary, and the more necessary, the more violent it will become. Europe, and the world, has to march ahead, or die by the wayside.

27 Responses to “Full Frontal Naked Nationalism”

“The bad news is that progress is still too slow, and the finish line is still too far off,” Lagarde told a conference on economic inclusion in London.

While the task of reforming banks is complex, progress is also being held back by “fierce industry pushback” and fatigue that is bound to set in at this point in a long race, she said.

“A big gap is that the too-big-to-fail problem has not yet been solved,” Lagarde said, referring to the belief in markets that governments will still step in to rescue the biggest banks to avoid the mayhem seen when Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008.

The IMF estimated that the implicit subsidy or cheaper funding costs from being too big to fail amounted to about $70 billion in the United States and up to $300 billion in the euro zone. Mark Carney, chairman of the Financial Stability Board, a regulatory task force for the Group of 20 economies (G20), has said he wants the too-big-to-fail phenomenon “cracked by Christmas” but faces challenges in Europe and Asia.

Lagarde also called for regulators across the world to agree a framework for winding down big banks in trouble.

“This is a hole in the financial architecture right now, and it calls for countries to put the global good of financial stability ahead of their parochial concerns,” Lagarde said.

Did a French chopper really fly across a whole ocean? Come on. More likely to and from a nearby French island.

Your defense of nationalism is on the spot as long as it applies to European nationalism, a minimal dose of which is sorely needed. But Le Pen is interested only in French nationalism. Like the Three Little Piggies, she identifies correctly the threat, but she thinks she’ll be perfectly safe from the Big Bad Wolf in her straw house.

“Across the ocean” does not mean from Brest to Charlotte, USA. It means from the French coast to hundreds of kilometers out. Notice the Brits did not do it. And the “Independence of the Seas” depends upon the French public hospital, state of the art system. There was also a doctor on board (something no other country has).

I found even better photos of Marine, but did not put them up, lest people accuse me of fantasizing about her.

Marine is way smarter than pundits have it. After all, she is a lawyer… And a EUROPEAN MP. She talks the way she does for (French) votes, but first she is going to have to seduce the UKIP who hates her guts, just because she reminds them of Johanne D’ Arc…

Well, JMG, many of the complaints of so called “Europhobes” are valid. In particular, I do not take Marine Le Pen lightly. Some of her precise complaints about the banking system and the Euro, I have talked about, years before she did. My essay goes into more specifics, just the opposite of Krugman’s the euro-ought-to-be-destroyed mania.

You’ve been erecting a lot of strawmen and barking up the wrong tree lately it’s not really good for the coherence of your position. Those unelected Brussels elites and bureaucrats making important but now apparently wrong policy decisions for the whole of EU have as much to answer for the current mess.

Krugman is merely saying it’s time to recalibrate. Re-boot and reset policies. He wants the EU to succeed. And because he’s hearing news about the difficulty of young adults in France finding work or the high suicide rates in Spain and Italy, it’s time for those EU policymakers to admit they were wrong on their austerity prescription.

To say I erect strawmen and bark wrong, without any specific example, except that Krugman is a Europhile, so I have got to be wrong.

I do not doubt that Krugman is a Europhile, albeit an ignorant one, and a greater lover of USA finance.

Krugman: “Sorry, but depression-level slumps didn’t happen in Europe before the coming of the euro.”
That’s a lie.
Krugman protects the banks: when did you see him ever suggest banking reform? All he does he scream that the banks ought to get more money.

Krugman, de facto, is a Europhobe. In the sense he is to the right of Marine Le Pen about the Euro. Long has been. After getting more than 1,000 comments from me, though, his position has become more subtle. But sometimes he spastically revert to carp.

As Dominique said, having people like Krugman claiming the Euro is a problem is causative for the rise of Europhobia.

The wrong decisions was not to have nationalized the banks systematically. All of them. Not just Northern Rock [UK], and Royal Bank of Scotland [UK], and Hypo Real estate (Deutschland). These were three of the world’s largest banks. All other bankrupt banks ought to have been nationalized.

When did you see Krugman propose to nationalize a bank? Does that mean he is on the right of Cameron?

Somebody who writes:“Sorry, but depression-level slumps didn’t happen in Europe before the coming of the euro.”
can be argued to be not just Europhobic, but a holocaust denier. After all, Hitler’s program is what Krugman adopted: break up Europe, devalue, make economic war…

I have explained in detail, in countless essays: LORD KEYNES, a Francophobe, a worthy of 1919 peace conference in Paris, invented the Versailles Treaty theory that the Nazis adopted LATER.

This all blossomed with higher circles in England, and the USA being increasingly Francophobic and pro-Nazi, culminating with the British-Nazi treaty of 1935, especially its secret protocol. The UK applied the brakes in 1936, but IBM and other plutocrats from across the Atlantic supported Nazism until 8 may 1945.

In a recent comment, the esteemed Ian Miller, in a comment here, quoted Von Manstein, one of the top ten Nazis, to prove the French were bad. Von Manstein kept the Bundeswehr a Nazi fortress, well into the sixties.

History is not as simple as propagandized.
And I am not saying that Le Pen is all right, just that she has adopted many ideas I have talked about forever. I am not going to say the sky is black, just because Marine Le Pen says it’s blue.
J-C Juncker is a greater danger for progress and democracy than Le Pen.
PA

Keynes’ objection to stiff penalties to Germany was borne both by economic sense and humanitarian considerations. Unless the victors were actually prepared to completely obliterate the state of Germany and its people, a humane alternative is to allow it to get back on its feet and become a peaceful member of a community of nations (something akin to Japan after WW2). Instead, a weakened and humiliated Germany gave rise to fascism and cultivated the conditions which led to another horrible war.

“The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness should be abhorrent and detestable, –abhorrent and detestable, even if it were possible, even if it enriched ourselves, even if it did not sow the decay of the whole civilised life of Europe.”

“If we aim deliberately at the impoverishment of Central Europe, vengeance, I dare predict, will not limp. Nothing can then delay for very long that final war between the forces of Reaction and the despairing convulsions of Revolution, before which the horrors of the late German war will fade into nothing.” – The Economic Consequences of Peace, JMK

Dear Lovell: Right. Let’s analyze this.
“The policy of reducing Germany to servitude for a generation”
Yeap, Lord. Who proposed that? Answer: nobody. That was not the subject. Never was. By claiming it was, Keynes was being a Nazi. Or, more exactly, inventing the theme the Nazis would harp on. Oh, we Germans were reduced to servitude? Lord Keynes said it earlier, in 1919.

You yourself say: “stiff penalties“. There NO penalties against the Kaiserreich in 1919. None. Absolutely none. Retrospectively, France ought to have been allowed to annex the Sarre, or at least occupy it indefinitely. But that sort of maneuver was prevented, because the international community animated by enemies of France since 1815, made sure that Gaul could not be extending to its old borders.
“Depriving Germany of happiness?” How? By freeing from servitude the peoples that the Prussians had occupied, oppressed, terrorized, exploited, pressured, subjugated, deprived of human rights? Depriving Germany of happiness by giving right to the Jews? Those rights who were removed in 1815? And so were they to the Poles, and others.

The huge mistake of 1919 was not to have tried, judged, condemned and executed 1,000 “Prussian” war criminals. If nothing else, that would have deprived the Nazis of some of their most illustrious founders. First of all, it would have given the Germans something to think about.

BTW, a commenter on this site Ian Miller quoted with approbation the criminal Von Manstein. As far as I am concerned, all those guys ought to have hanged. Von Manstein went on with his Nazi career into the 1960s, preventing all those who had resisted Hitler to come anywhere next to the Bundeswehr.
PA

He was specifically referring to the reparations stipulated in Versailles Treaty. It’s his judgment call as an economist. The ensuing collapse of Weimar Republic, hyperinflation, economic stress, and the consequent rise of murderous right wing nuts is a vindication of his warning that a humiliated but not totally incapacitated enemy will come back to sting more virulently.

Keynes fabricated a self fulfilling prophecy. He CAUSED the problem. Moreover, the ECP is full of lies. The hatred against France is the overwhelming theme. Also, Poland.

Here is part of typical Keynesian Nazi garbage, towards the end of ECP, a continuous section:

…”the signature of the Peace was, above all, the price which some Germans thought it worth while to pay for the unity which was all that was left them of 1870.

Therefore Paris, with some hopes of disintegration across the Rhine not yet extinguished, can resist no opportunity of insult or indignity, no occasion of lowering the prestige or weakening the influence of a Government, with the continued stability of which all the conservative interests of Europe are nevertheless bound up.

VII.61

The same dilemma affects the future of Poland in the rôle which France has cast for her. She is to be strong, Catholic, militarist, and faithful, the consort, or at least the favorite, of victorious France, prosperous and magnificent between the ashes of Russia and the ruin of Germany. Roumania, if only she could be persuaded to keep up appearances a little more, is a part of the same scatter-brained conception.
Yet, unless her great neighbors are prosperous and orderly, Poland is an economic impossibility with no industry but Jew-baiting. And when Poland finds that the seductive policy of France is pure rhodomontade and that there is no money in it whatever, nor glory either, she will fall, as promptly as possible, into the arms of somebody else.

VII.62

The calculations of “diplomacy” lead us, therefore, nowhere. Crazy dreams and childish intrigue in Russia and Poland and thereabouts are the favorite indulgence at present of those Englishmen and Frenchmen who seek excitement in its least innocent form, and believe, or at least behave as if foreign policy was of the same genre as a cheap melodrama.”

– Reparations paid by France, to Germany, after the 1870 war 4,25 billions Marks.

– Reparations paid by Germany, to France, GB, and Belgium, after WWI, the equivalent to 6.7 billions Marks from 1870, most of it borrowed money.

The former is not even worth mentioning, even though Germany was left untouched by the war; the later seemingly is an abomination, even though the German army indulged in much destruction, as an occupying force, and even more, as a retreating, beaten one.

Might also be worth noting that lazy, hedonistic France paid its reparations in full, and in a few years, instead of the full generation hoped by the Germans; Serious, disciplined Germany weaseled out of them, both in WWI, and WWII.

Thanks Kevin! :-)!
Bismarck had devised the punishment (they were not reparations!) of France, because he hoped the Republic could not pay back, and the war could be started again. Instead, the Republic paid back in 5 years. In 1890 Bismarck was thrown out by the new young Kaiser. Bismarck, but 20 years too late, realized he had created a monster.

The Kaiserreich’s troops annihilated the French coal industry by ravaging deliberately the mines, exploding and flooding them. Even Keynes recognized that Germany ought to provide with as much coal as needed, indefinitely. (But in ECP, Keynes accuses France to have annexed the Saar, which he said was French for only a fraction of the last 1,000 years, a reasoning that can be held for most of… France; instead the Sarre was returned, after a (Nazi organized!) vote, to Hitler… in 1936; the Sarre’s coal was crucial in the continuation of the war in 1944-45; historically, of course, it was part of Gaul).

The Prussians’ monstrosity was fully obvious as soon as August 1914, killing 3 year old girls, destroying the 15 centuries old Louvain library. In November 1918, they dynamited the Coucy castle, the tallest castle ever. (It’s still under excavation/reconstruction.)

Germany finished paying the reparations for WWI around 1999 (!) After WWII, Germany was asked for no reparations. Instead the Allies made sure its old fascist spirit would be thoroughly demolished.

After World War Two, the French Republic changed strategy, and made Germany an offer it could not refuse: the European Union.PA

I am not privy to the genealogical roots of Keynes. Maybe he’s got some old Bavarian blood running through his veins or something. But his predisposition of sympathy for the Germans does not mean he is, by default, a proto-Nazi any more than your own strong sympathetic bias for France will make you, by default, an advocate of violent racial purging riding on popular crest of, say, National Front, would you?

Chris Snuggs I maintain that all of what I said is true. As for immigration, look at Marseilles and the suburbs around Paris. The French elite is in denial, totally incompetent and without a CLUE about what to do. Hollande speaks about growth and jobs. He is a total MORON. WHAT has been done to make life easier for empoyers, who will do ANYTHING POSSIBLE not to take on workers? (THREE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY PAGES OF THE CODE DU TRAVAIL compared to 66 in Switzerland.

The French elite are scum. The people voted AGAINST an EU treaty in 2005 and th government IGNORED THEM. The Germans are arrogant and complacent, The UK MUST get out of this hellish and quasi-fascist construct that is destroxying Europe.

AS I write, the socialist party is on 14% popularity and the UMP mired in corruption AGAIN. The only sane vote in France at present is for the FN, and MORE will vote for them unless the political elite shows more humility and competence. As for the anti-EU votes last week, Hollande seems determined to CHANGE NOTHING. That is a symbol of the political elite. “CHANGE NOTHING: WE KNOW BEST. C’EST LA FAUTE DE QUELQU’UN D’AUTRE.”

Let’s make this clear: Hollande is a moron. He went to vote by car in the middle of France. Forgot about the traffic jam. Got jammed terrible on the way back, he and the nuclear codes. The only question is whether Hollande is a bigger moron than Sarkozy (I don’t think so). I voted for neither.

I am always quoting the direct democracy in Switzerland as the general direction to follow, even by the USA (California has a direct democracy system, and it has given positive results recently, including AUGMENTING taxes, getting out of the debt crisis). Switzerland’s people just refused to finance the Swedidh.American fighter-bomber Grippen, an underperforming plane. A Trojan horse for the USA. That was ten days ago. The money was extriicated today from the military budget, and assigned to the general fund. That will teach the conspirator not to buy Rafales.

France immigration, thanks to xenophobic Sarkozy, averaged as low as 60,000 a year (including students). At the same time Britain was averaging 200,000 a year (more than three times more). Cameron wants to reduce it to zero (that’s very wrong in my opinion: my nephew paid 12,000 Euros in tuition to a British university; more exactly the European UNION paid much of his tuition, as he had a scholarship in biology).

Studies have shown that the original 40 million British population has not grown, and all the growth in Britain has been caused by recent immigrants, and their children. Have you been to London, lately? What say you? France demographic growth has been more internal.

I have a house in Aix en Provence, I do not feel crowded by anything but visiting Americans. Serious.

There are huge problems in Europe, and my most recent essay advocate that more EUROPEAN NATIONALISM would help enormously. But I don’t think kicking the Royal Navy’s strategic nuclear submarines out of Scotland, and forcing it to settle in Brest will help (it’s actually a back-up plan!)

I do agree that many of the six million French civil servants should fired and would be more useful picking up garbage along the freeways. Many in France, even politicians, suggest to adopt simple British methods. Actually, London is among the top 5 places of employment of French people.

Brilliant take on this via New York Review of Books:
Ukraine: The Antidote to Europe’s Fascists?http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/27/ukraine-antidote-europes-fascists/?insrc=wbll
“… The European left has a real problem, and it is not the Ukrainian far right. It is the European far right, which happens to be popular, and is supported by the Russian far right, which happens to be in power in Moscow…
…The shocking electoral outcomes in Europe will clear some heads, but something much grander is needed. What we have seen in the decade since the last major enlargement of the EU—ten new countries joined in 2004—is that the European Union cannot stand still. It needs challenges and it needs prospects. It needs the energy and enthusiasm of people who do not take freedom and order for granted but who are willing to work for them.”

Enlarging the European Union too fast was a British plot to demolish Franco-German leadership. France provided the brains (example: the Euro, a FRENCH idea), and Germany the muscle.

Yet, EU enlargement is NOT a bad thing..

What’s needed?
More of the old stuff. France and Germany should go right ahead, unionize (;-)), and forge right ahead. I have said this forever, and mongrel Sarkozy barked that way last week (before being buried by a pile of unrelated garbage from his own party).
PA

Chris Snuggs 10,000 eurocrats earn more than the British Prime Minister and pay 13.4% tax, and get vast expenses. MEPs voted out will get 40,000€ compensation plus large pension.

The moronic Diplomatic Service cost SIX THOUSAND MILLION EUROS to set up. The new ECB building cost ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED MILLION EUROS. The palace of van Rompo cost THREE HUNDRED MILLION EUROS and counting.

The EU accounts have NEVER BEEN SIGNED OFF by auditors as they “don’t know where the money has gone”. The waste, corruption and venality are staggering.

The EU is a bloated, arrogant, venal and undemocratic monster, yet Hollande will change nothing. He, his party and the EU are destroying France. Unemployment has gone up AGAIN, now over 11%. Tax revenue is FIFTEEN BILLION LESS than predicted after his insane 75 new or increased taxes. There are STILL THREE THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND FIFTY PAGES in the French ‘Code du Travail’ compared to 66 in Switzerland. Time for a reality check, Patrice.

Well, Chris, this is all outrageous, indeed. I never voted for Hollande, nor supported him, so my reality is OK. As I said, he is like Sarko. Moreover I am for total democracy, or let’s say direct legislative democracy as in Switzerland. That’s where I would like to go and work. So we actually agree.

You did not answer my question about why UKIP europhobizes Marine Le Pen.

Dear Lovell: I have no particular sympathy for the French on one side, or the Germans, on the other. Although I do understand both well: I am fluent in both languages, and cultures. I drive a German car, my 4 year old daughter recognizes German musicians by name. Several Germans, including Nietzsche, I view as towering intellectuals.

Even worse: I am related (by alliances) to gen. Von Molkte himself, the criminal in chief.

Simply the ECP is full of outrageous lies which the Nazis used later. As LORD Keynes was head of the British delegation, economic side, his position was notorious.

LORD Keynes, like the Kaiser was actually ANTI GERMAN. LORD Keynes was just a PLUTOCRAT, from the Plutocratic Party, an outshoot of which was the Nazi Party. I am pro-German.

“A nationalist is a foreigner who would be a patriot if saying the same things and was one of us”. Seriously though ‘nationalist’ is another of those terms that mean very little. For example when the US embargoes Cuba, which has not fired a single shot against them, this is a patriotic act. When Israel embargoes Gaza which naturally fires rockets, this is nationalist policiy. When Greece objects to insanity, e.g. a country with a) not even in the region, b) much smaller both population and landwise than its corresponding territory and c) with no historical connection wants the name of the area to refer exclusively to them and not the real ones, this is nationalism. When the US has a problem with ‘french fries’, this is partiotism. When Le Pen has a similar attitude towards illegal immigration than any US state or a possible 5th column, this is nationalism, while the minutemen are patriots and the Patriot Act is, well, patriotic. So there is nationalist and nationalist. You cannot put Le Pen or Wilders in the same lot with Jobbik or Golden Dawn or even the italian Legia. Sadly, labels are usually used as a smokescreen to cover and avoid an open discussion of the issues. Instead of “your arguments are stupid because of a, b and c” one hears “your arguments are stupid because they make you a nationalist or because we all know you’re a nationalist”

Agreed 100%. That’s why, although I could not vote for Le Pen (be it only because of her present position on immigration, which I view as anti-nationalistic), I put her (what I view as) positive ideas in a favorable light.

There is too much labeling and not enough looking at the ideas, straight on. For example Krugman and Obama are viewed as good guys, because they said so. Nobody paid the early attention that their ideas served, first of all, the banks of the USA, and the medical-financial “criminal” (The Economist, June 2014) health care industry.